Di seguito tutti gli interventi pubblicati sul sito, in ordine cronologico.
 
 

O singura doza de bautura dietetica acidulata, consumata zilnic, este de ajuns pentru a creste riscul aparitiilor unor afectiuni cardiace si hepatice, având totodata capacitatea de a favoriza declansarea diabetului.

Cercetatorii de la Facultatea de Medicina Miller din cadrul Universitatii Miami, împreuna cu cei de la Centrul Medical al Universitatii California, au efectuat un studiu pe 2.564 de participanti pe care i-au monitorizat timp de 10 ani. Ei sustin ca cei care beau astfel de bauturi sunt cu 43% mai predispusi sa dezvolte boli vasculare, atac de cord sau atac cerebral, comparativ cu cei care nu consuma bauturi carbogazoase.

Studii anterioare efectuate asupra bauturilor racoritoare, care contin cantitati substantiale de îndulcitori artificiali, au demonstrat ca acestea pot contribui la dezvoltarea acelorasi boli hepatice care apar, de regula, în urma consumului excesiv de alcool.

Bauturile acidulate dietetice sunt promovate ca o alternativa la cele care contin zahar, fiind considerate mai sanatoase pentru ca au mai putine calorii. Însa unele cerecetari pun la îndoiala aceste afirmatii, sugerând ca bauturile în cauza pot da dependenta.

Cu toate acestea, modul în care bauturile racoritoare favorizeaza aparitia afectiunilor vasculare este înca necunoscut, motiv pentru care oamenii de stiinta intentioneaza sa continue cercetarea.

Sursa: Daily Mail - via Descopera.ro

Spurred by a wave of recent Web videos showing the bottom of a dropped  hovering dramatically in midair , physicists have provided new insights into this phenomenon, from the existence of shock waves in the falling Slinky, to a remarkably universal "levitation" time for a Slinky on other planets or moons despite their different gravitational fields.

In February 2000, the late science writer Martin Gardner posed a simple question intended for physics students, but also triggering a new round of papers and videos on the much-studied toy. Gardner wrote: "If you hold one end of a Slinky, letting it hang down and then drop it, what happens?"

"It turns out the bottom stays suspended, levitating in air for some period in time," said Shimon Kolkowitz, a physics graduate student at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. As an undergraduate at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif. in 2007, Kolkowitz wrote a paper now posted online for a class taught by his professor, physics Nobel Laureate Robert Laughlin.

And recently, Bill Unruh, a physics professor at the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver, heard some colleagues in the faculty lounge discussing a video of the levitating Slinky. As a result, Unruh, a world expert in black hole radiation, became captivated with Slinky physics.

Making calculations over a couple of days, Unruh wrote and posted a paper on the falling Slinky at the website arXiv.

Inspired by Gardner's riddle and earlier Slinky studies while putting together his paper, Kolkowitz calculated that the bottom of his metal Slinky would remain suspended for approximately three-tenths of a second. And only recently he made a surprising realization: the levitation time of the toy would be exactly the same if it were dropped on the moon, Jupiter or Mars, even with their vastly different gravitational fields.

Unruh found that the falling Slinky creates a shock wave through the toy, analogous to the blast wave of a bomb or a sonic boom created by aircraft.

What in the world is going on?

"A Slinky is a simple spring, with the unique attribute that the spring in its natural resting state has all the coils touching one another," Unruh said.

"It's what's called a pretensioned spring," Kolkowitz added. "If you just leave it sitting on a desk on its side it'll actually be fully compressed."

Held from midair, the Slinky stretches out, quickly reaching a condition known as "equilibrium." in which the downward force of gravity is balanced by the upward tension of the coils above it. When the top is released, the bottom stays suspended. The top of the Slinky collapses, so that the coils slam into each other. That collapse travels down as a wave through the Slinky. The bottom coils remain at rest until the top crashes into them.

And that's the key to understanding how the bottom of the Slinky remains suspended in midair for a short while.

"The bottom part of the Slinky hasn't deformed in any way," Kolkowitz explained. "Until that compression reaches the very bottom it won't move."

This levitation time -- approximately 0.3 seconds for Kolkowitz's own Slinky -- would be the same on any planet or moon. Gravity and tension of the spring effectively cancel each other out.

Kolkowitz said that one way of understanding this is that on the moon, the weaker gravitational field wouldn't stretch the Slinky as much, so the spring would compress more gently towards the bottom when dropped, taking the same 0.3 seconds to travel there. On Jupiter, the stronger gravitational field would stretch the suspended Slinky to a greater degree, so that the spring would have a larger distance to compress. But the more stretched-out top would snap back faster toward the bottom, resulting in the same levitation time.

As Kolkowitz pointed out, however, the Slinky's center of mass -- which shifts, but is always located somewhere in between the top and bottom of the toy -- still accelerates according to gravity all the way down to the ground from the moment it's released. So there's no violation of any of Newton's laws or Galileo's observations about falling objects.

The levitation time would only increase with a heavier Slinky and decrease if the coils were stiffer. The spring's mass and stiffness, Kolkowitz said, are the only two factors that affect the duration of levitation.

Kolkowitz pointed out this levitation effect would occur when any other spring or other elastic, nonrigid object is dropped -- and no object is completely rigid. "It's just that the Slinky is an especially easy system" in which to observe the effect, he said.

Another way to think about the levitation problem is that "the wave velocity in that Slinky is all that matters," Kolkowitz said. The wave velocity dictates "the length of time it takes information to reach the bottom of the Slinky," he said. Once that wave slams into the bottom, the bottom no longer levitates.

In his analysis, Unruh observed that the collision of the upper part of the Slinky with the motionless lower coils is an example of a shock wave, analogous to a sonic boom that occurs in aircraft traveling faster than the speed of sound. Moreover, the wave that moves through the toy travels parallel to the compression of the Slinky, making it a "longitudinal" wave, the same type of wave as a sound wave. The normal speed of this wave in a Slinky is best measured by how many loops per second the wave passes through, about 50-100 loops per second for a typical Slinky, depending on such things as the thickness of the coils.

But in a falling Slinky, the coils crash into each other, creating a shock wave.

According to Unruh, the velocity of the shock wave, when it reaches the bottom, is notably higher than the normal velocity of the Slinky wave, breaking a sort of "sound barrier" in the Slinky.

"This behavior of shock waves is typical," he wrote in an email to Inside Science. "The blast wave of a bomb gets to you faster than the sound of a bomb would if it were very small."

A shock wave is simply a statement that something in a physical system changes abruptly, in this case, the velocity of the lower coils in the Slinky.

"There is a lot of interesting physics in a very, very simple system," said Unruh.

Kolkowitz said that this is an easy experiment for anyone to duplicate: use a stopwatch to time the fall when a friend drops a Slinky. This technique depends on the reflexes of the person running the stopwatch and therefore could introduce some error.

Filming the falling Slinky with a video camera that captures a known number of frames per second and then counting the number of frames in which the bottom of the Slinky stays still would allow experimenters to more accurately calculate how long the Slinky's bottom stays suspended.

"It's just such an easy experiment to do and it's kind of fun," Kolkowitz said.

Though Kolkowitz doesn't use Slinky experiments in his quantum physics work, he said the surprising insights on the levitating Slinky shows how studying and measuring even everyday objects can provide results that are "counterintuitive and not what you expect."

Study from Cornell University

PhysOrg

Source: Inside Science News Service - via ZeitNews.org

Sono molti gli animali che si sono lasciati addomesticare da noi esseri umani nel corso della storia: la convivenza con i cani è cominciata oltre 33mila anni fa, quella con i gatti intorno a 10mila, quella con i cavalli da più di 5mila, per non parlare di mucche, capre e via dicendo. Ma ci sono specie che sembra stiano sperimentando qualcosa cui non avevamo mai fatto caso prima d'ora: si starebbero addomesticando da sole. Una tra tutte? I bonobo (Pan paniscus).

  

Per Brian Hare, antropologo evoluzionista alla Duke University e autore di uno studio pubblicato su Animal Behaviour, si tratta di un vero e proprio processo di selezione naturale contro l' aggressività. “ L'idea che una specie addomestichi se stessa è un po' folle, ma ci sono alcune specie che riescono a dominare su altre proprio diventando più mansuete”, ha detto Hare a Wired.com.

Nei bonobo i ricercatori hanno colto alcune caratteristiche tipiche delle specie addomesticate: innanzitutto, rispetto ai loro cugini scimpanzé (Pan troglodytes, le due specie si sono divise circa un milione di anni fa) , questi primati hanno un'indole molto più gentile; inoltre mostrano particolari cambiamenti nello sviluppo e differenze anatomiche analoghe a quelle esistenti tra le specie addomesticate e i predecessori selvatici, come denti e mascelle più piccole.

Infatti, come ricorda Wired.com, la perdita dell' aggressività è l'essenza della domesticazione. Questo processo coinvolge i sistemi endocrino e nervoso, porta con sé mutazioni in diversi network di geni e genera una serie di cambiamenti anche nel fenotipo. I biologi la chiamano la s indrome della domesticazione.

Uno dei più grandi esperimenti che ha dimostrato in modo inconfutabile gli effetti della domesticazione è quello partito nel 1956 e che si sta conducendo ancora oggi in Russia sulle volpi. In questo studio, che coinvolge circa 130 fattorie, solo agli animali che si mostrano più tolleranti alla presenza umana è concesso di riprodursi. Ebbene, in soli 50 anni le inafferrabili volpi sottoposte a selezione sono diventate come cagnolini giocherelloni che adorano farsi spazzolare la coda. In pratica hanno mantenuto i classici tratti dei cuccioli, che normalmente scompaiono con la crescita. Anche il fenotipo ricorda quello dei piccoli: manto macchiato, orecchie pendule, coda riccia e zampe corte.

Torniamo alle scimmie. I maschi degli scimpanzé sono spesso in lotta per il posto da capobranco, mentre i maschi di bonobo raramente combattono gli uni contro gli altri. Anche nei comportamenti riproduttivi, i primi sono violenti con le compagne, mentre i secondi no: in generale, sono più inclini al gioco e a scambiarsi favori durante tutto il corso della loro vita. Secondo quanto riportano i ricercatori, anche alcune aree cerebrali considerate fondamentali per il comportamento, come l'amigdala, mostrerebbero arrangiamenti diversi nelle due specie.

In pratica, è come se l'evoluzione avesse agito nei bonobo in modo analogo ai russi con le volpi.

D'accordo con Hare è Richard Wrangham, primatologo e co-autore dello studio: quelli osservati  sembrerebbero proprio segni di domesticazione. Ma come potrebbe essere avvenuto questo processo? I biologi pensano che la risposta stia nei gorilla. Scimpanzé e gorilla hanno infatti condiviso alcune aree per molto tempo nel corso della loro storia, dovendo competere per il cibo: come indica il Wwf infatti, i bonobo vivono a sud del fiume Congo, mentre gli scimpanzé e Gorilla stanno a  nord.

Ad un certo punto della loro storia evolutiva, anche i lupi più docili avrebbero trovato un vantaggio rispetto a quelli più aggressivi – fa notare Hare – potendo occupare una nuova nicchia ecologica ai confini degli insediamenti umani.

Il fenomeno potrebbe essersi verificato in moltissime specie. I due scienziati sottolineano però che questo è solo uno scenario plausibile: quella dell'auto-domesticazione resta, almeno per ora,  un'affascinante ipotesi.

Fonte: Wired.it

1. Uzbek government allegedly running full-scale sterilization program
 
A BBC investigation has revealed evidence of a government program to sterilize thousands of women throughout Uzbekistan – often without their knowledge. 
 
According to sources quoted by journalist Natalia Antelava, every Uzbek doctor is given a quota. One doctor said she must sterilize four women per month, but others said the figure might be as high as eight per week in rural areas.
 
A source in the Health Ministry said the program is meant to slow population growth. Medical professionals, however, said the real aim was to reduce the number of births and, therefore, to lower the rate of infant and maternal deaths in international measures.
 
Evidence also suggests that a two-year increase in the number of Caesarean sections, which make sterilization easier, is linked to the program. While official statistics say Caesareans account for 6.8 percent of births, doctors interviewed for the article challenged those numbers, with a chief surgeon at a hospital near Tashkent estimating the figure was as high as 80 percent.
 
In an official response to the BBC, the authorities denied the program’s existence, arguing that women are sterilized only voluntarily.
 
The BBC says forced sterilization in Uzbekistan was first discovered by pathologist Gulbakhor Turaeva in 2005. She gathered evidence of 200 cases, but when she revealed the data publicly, she was fired and later imprisoned, accused of smuggling opposition literature into the country.
 
2. Swiss story about Roma crime draws fire
 
A cover story about Roma published in a Swiss magazine earlier this week continues to cause outrage across Europe, Der Spiegel reports. The article, which was published 5 April in Die Weltwoche, carried the headline “The Roma Are Coming: Robberies in Switzerland” with the subhead “They come, steal, and leave,” a reference to an alleged increase in crimes committed by Roma gangs.
 

 
The photo illustrating the article, of a Roma child pointing a gun at the camera, contributed to the backlash. Livio Mancini, the Italian photographer who took the photo in 2008 in Kosovo, told a Swiss newspaper that Weltwoche had obtained the photo through an agency and used it without asking him.

Several criminal complaints against the magazine have been filed in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland, including by Austrian journalist Klaus Kamolz, who said he wanted to send a “symbolic signal” against the “blanket condemnation of Roma as criminals.” The Central Council of German Sinti and Roma also filed a criminal complaint with a German prosecutor for racial incitement and libel against the magazine and declared it would take steps to prevent its sale in Germany. The council’s leader, Romani Rose, accused the newspaper of equating a person’s ethnic origin with criminality, comparing the story with anti-Roma propaganda from the Nazi era.

 
In a video on the Weltwoche website, deputy editor in chief Philip Gut, who co-authored the article, said he didn’t understand the outrage caused by the photo. It was used, he told a Swiss newspaper, to illustrate “the fact that Roma gangs abuse their children for criminal purposes.”
 
3. Serbia arrests 14 for 2008 U.S. embassy riot
 
Serbian police have arrested 14 people in connection with the 2008 riot in Belgrade that resulted in a blaze that killed one person at the U.S. Embassy, according to Balkan Insight. In announcing the arrests, Prosecutor Zagorka Dolovac said her office had been investigating the suspects for more than a year. Some of the arrested were football hooligans known to have caused problems in the past, according to B92.
 
On 21 February 2008, hundreds stormed and set fire to the U.S. Embassy to protest Kosovo’s declaration of independence. In the process, protester Zoran Vujovic, a 20-year-old Serb displaced from his home in Kosovo, died of smoke inhalation.
 
The day after the arrests, Serbian Interior Minister Ivica Dacic said he had been kept in the dark about the operation. “I have nothing to do with this, because nobody informed me about it, which I consider to be impermissible. I consider this to be an absolutely poor example of doing things,” he told B92. Dacic also wondered why the arrests had taken place the day before the 11 April Belgrade derby, a soccer match between city rivals Red Star and Partizan.
 
Speculation about the extremely long delay in bringing the culprits to justice has touched on the suspected ties of some of the hooligans to political parties, who supposedly helped them escape prosecution, until now.
 
4. New pressure to free jailed Facebook activist in Azerbaijan
 
As one year passes since the arrest of a young Azeribaijani activist, new campaigns are sprouting up for his release. Bakhtiyar Hajiev was taken into custody in March 2011 and later sentenced to two years in prison for evading military service.
 

Photo from the Support Bakhtiyar Facebook page.

 A new video on YouTube purports to “tell the story of his persecution,” recounting that Hajiev had faced repression when he ran for parliament as an independent in 2010. During the campaign, he focused on the issues of human rights and corruption. But Hajiev and human rights organizations link the timing of his arrest to the activist’s role in organizing a Facebook campaign in the wake of the Arab Spring calling for a day of protests against the government and meetings across the country.    
 
At his trial, Hajiev said he was a conscientious objector and should have been granted the option of alternative service. His requests for parole have twice been rejected, most recently in late March, Radio Free Europe reports.
 
Students and teachers from Harvard University, where Hajiev graduated from the Kennedy School of Government in 2009, have also ramped up their protests. Almost 900 members of the Harvard community signed an online petition earlier this year calling for Hajiev’s release. And a 28 March editorial in Harvard’s student-written Crimson called on the university to do more to highlight Hajiev’s plight, saying, “Harvard University has failed to officially condemn Bakhtiyar’s arrest and conviction, or leverage its weight on the international stage to raise awareness about his case.”
 
5. In Chechnya, loose lips sink … taxis?
 
A new initiative in Chechnya hopes to put a lid on what some see as a growing social ill: gossip. The campaign was launched by the Chechen Government Committee on Youth and has been targeting mainly taxi and bus drivers, according to Radio Free Europe.
 

Ramzan Kadyrov

 

Campaigners have passed out bumper stickers to drivers with slogans like, ”Drive in silence, you’ll go farther,” and “The Almighty is against gossip,” according to the report. The group said the initiative was to help clean up the image of taxi drivers, who have “lost respect in the eyes of society because of their spread of disinformation among the passengers, ignorance of road regulations, and destruction of cultural values,” according to a statement posted on the group’s website.
 
Reaction to the campaign has been mixed, and many see Chechnya’s gossip-inspiring leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, as behind it, according to RFE. One man told RFE that the initiative, which he said harks back to the days of Joseph Stalin, has actually fueled more rumors about local leaders.

Joshua Boissevain and Ioana Caloianu are TOL editorial assistants. Jeremy Druker is TOL’s executive director and editor in chief. Anna Shamanska is a TOL editorial intern.

Source: Tol.org - Authors: Joshua Boissevain, Ioana Caloianu, Jeremy Druker, and Anna Shamanska

Matematicianul Thomas Hair, de la Florida Gulf Coast University, a ajuns la concluzia ca fie noi suntem singuri în univers, fie extraterestrii nu vor sa ne contacteze.

Dupa calculele sale, pentru a ajunge la cea mai apropiata stea vecina le-ar trebui 500 de ani si înca 500 pâna ar reusi sa construiasca o nava spatiala capabila de aceasta calatorie. Cu alte cuvinte, civilizatiile formate în proximitatea celor mai vechi stele ar trebui sa ne fi vizitat pâna acum.

De ce nu s-a întâmplat acest lucru? Hair crede ca extraterestri au trecut, pur si simplu, pe lânga noi. El speculeaza ca extraterestrii ar putea sa nu fie fiinte biologice, ci creaturi care folosesc alte resurse decât cele cunoscute de noi, motiv pentru care nu au nevoie de nimic de pe Pamânt. Pe de alta parte, s-ar putea ca aceste civilizatii sa utilizeze alte rute în univers, rute stabilite cu multa vreme înaintea aparitiei vietii pe Terra.

Oricare ar fi motivul, Hair sustine ca suntem ignorati. Teoria lui indica faptul ca, daca o civilizatie care traieste pe o planeta veche de 5 miliarde de ani, cum suntem noi, are o tehnologie care îi permite sa caute alte planete, atunci una de pe o planeta care dateaza de acum 10 miliarde de ani cu siguranta ne-ar fi putut gasi pe noi.

În aceste conditii, compusii cloro-fluoro-carbonici (CFC) din atmosfera ne-ar fi dat imediat de gol. CFS reprezinta un grup de compusi care se gasesc în fluidele de racire si aerosoli si care elibereaza atomi de clor atunci când sunt expusi la radiatii ultraviolete si distrug stratul de ozon al Pamântului.

Woods Halley, de la Universitatea din Minnesota, care tocmai a lansat o carte despre perspectivele descoperirii vietii extraterestre, afirma ca, pentru moment, avem foarte putine informatii despre modul în care viata a luat nastere pe Pamânt, motiv pentru care nu suntem capabili sa recunoastem viata extraterestra.

Sursa: Discovery - via Descopera.ro

Conform unor noi cercetari se pare ca, la toate mamiferele, creierul face acelasi lucru, indiferent daca animalele merg pe sol sau se urca într-un copac.

Oamenii de stiinta de la University College London explica faptul ca ideea conform careia oamenii concep hartile în mod tridimensional este neadevarata. Studiile lor s-au bazat pe analizarea neuronilor din zona hipocampului unor sobolani, locatie responsabila cu reprezentarea interna a spatiului. Pe masura ce animalele se deplaseaza, acesti neuroni numiti celule-grila si celule de pozitie, au un raspuns specific, activându-se si inactivându-se într-un mod ce ajuta la masurarea distantei parcurse de animal într-o anumita directie

Desi au mai existat cercetari anterioare pe aceasta tema, ele s-au concentrat pe modul în care aceste celule cartografice codifica spatiul bidimensional. Specialistii de la College London au decis sa analizeze modul în care celulele raspund la schimbarea de altitudine. Pentru a face acest lucru, ei au înregistrat impulsurile electrice de la celule individuale ale unor sobolani care urcau pe o scara spiralata. Astfel s-a observat ca ritmul de activare a celulelor a codificat foarte putine informatii legate de altitudine.

La oameni, probabil, lucrurile se petrec la fel: creierul nostru tine evidenta localizarii nostre pe o suprafata plana, definita în functie de modul în care este orientat corpul. Daca, de exemplu,o veverita se deplaseaza pe sol, iar apoi se catara într-un copac, harta sa interna bidimensionala va face trecerea de la planul orizontal la cel vertical. Astronautii sunt printre putinii oameni care pot descrie aceasta experienta. Atunci când se misca în spatiu si ajung sa "stea" pe plafon, ei au un moment de dezorientare înainte ca harta lor mentala sa se ajusteze si sa înteleaga ca punct de repet pentru "sus" este acum podeaua.

În urma studiului, cercetatorii nu reusit sa afle daca exista alte zone din creier care sunt responsabile cu codificarea altitudinii sau daca, pur si simplu, mamiferele nu au nevoie de aceasta informate pentru a trai.

"Poate un animal are harti-mozaic formate din fragmente plate, dar care pot fi orientate dupa necesitate. Sau poate, pur si simplu, creierul nostru percepe lumea ca fiind plata", a concluzionat Kathryn Jeffery, coordonatorul studiului.

Sursa: Scientific American - via Descopera.ro

Earlier this year, juniors Eric Berdinis and Jeff Kiske, both computer engineering majors in the School of Engineering and Applied Science, hacked together a high-tech upgrade for the visually impaired out of off-the-shelf video game equipment. Called the Kinecthesia, it’s a belt-worn camera system that gives users feedback about their immediate surroundings through directional vibrations.

Although it’s fresh out of the workshop, the Kinecthesia is already generating buzz: it was selected as one of 10 projects for Google’s Zeitgeist Young Minds conference, which highlights college-aged innovators.

Berdinis and Kiske started the project as their final assignment in professor Rahul Mangharam’s embedded systems class. Tasked with creating a medical device, the duo began exploring the Microsoft Kinect, a video game controller that uses multiple cameras to translate a player’s real-life motions into actions on the screen.

“We saw that there wasn’t much in the way of assistive devices that had to do with vision, despite all of these new cameras and things like the Kinect,“ says Kiske. “We just thought it looked cool and started playing around with it.”

Recognizing the Kinect’s ability to translate details about environmental depth into digital information as a route to a high-tech upgrade on walking canes, the team began figuring out how to integrate the technology into a wearable device. Getting the cameras to talk to the BeagleBoard, a miniature, customizable computer at the heart of the system, was the first step.

 

“The Kinect wasn’t intended to work with anything but the Xbox, so modifying the code to make it work on this processor was one of the biggest challenges,” says Berdinis.

Though the Kinect is great at determining how far away objects are, another challenge was deciding how to relay that information to the user.

“We didn’t want to overwhelm the user with audio cues or vibration motors all across the waist,” says Berdinis. “Through trial and error, we found that three buzzer zones was the right amount.”

The three buzzers, positioned left, right and center, begin vibrating once objects become close enough to potentially impede the user, and increase in intensity as the objects get closer.

Berdinis and Kiske will continue to work on the Kinecthesia; connections made through the Google conference have enabled them to work with the visually impaired community and further refine their system into what could be a life-changing product.

Source: PhysOrg

More information: http://www.kinecthesia.com/

Provided by University of Pennsylvania - via ZeitNews.org

Adolat, care provine din Uzbekistan unde viata se centreaza in jurul copiilor si a unei familii mari, a mers la medic si a aflat ca a fost sterilizata dupa ce a nascut-o pe fiica sa prin cezariana.

"Am fost socata. Am strigat si am intrebat: 'Dar de ce? Cine a putut sa faca asta?' Doctorul a spus: 'Aceasta este legea in Uzbekistan'", a declarat ea.

Cu toate acestea, sterlizarea nu este, oficial, legalizata in Uzbekistan.

Dar dovezile stranse de BBC sugereaza ca autoritatile au condus un program in ultimii doi ani pentru a steriliza femeile din tara, deseori fara stirea lor.

"In fiecare an ni se prezinta un plan. Fiecarui doctor i se spune cator femei trebuie sa li se dea contraceptive; cate femei urmeaza sa fie sterilizate", afirma un ginecolog din capitala Taskent.

"Exista o cota. Cota mea este de patru femei pe luna", a adaugat ea sub acoperirea anonimatului.

Alte surse medicale sugereaza ca se fac presiuni puternice in special asupra medicilor din zonele rurale ale tarii, unde unii ginecologi au ordinul de a steriliza pana la opt femei pe luna.

O mama a declarat ca a avut o durere suspecta si sangerari abundente timp de mai multe luni dupa ce l-a nascut pe fiul ei. Dupa ce a facut o ecografie, a descoperit ca i-a fost scos uterul.

"Mi-au spus: 'Ce-ti mai trebuie copii? Ai deja doi'", a povestit ea.

Potrivit unei surse din cadrul Ministerului Sanatatii, programul de sterilizare are ca scop sa controleze cresterea populatiei in Uzbekistan, care a ajuns oficial la 28 de milioane de persoane.

Primul caz de sterlizare fortata a fost raportat in 2005, de Gulbakhor Turaeva, un patolog din orasul Andijan care a remarcat ca uterele unor femei tinere si sanatoase sunt aduse la morga la care lucra.

Dupa ce a strans dovezi privind 200 de sterilizari fortate, urmarind femeile ale caror utere au fost indepartate, ea si-a prezentat public descoperirile si le-a cerut explicatii sefilor sai.

Ea a fost concediata, iar in 2007 a fost incarcerata, fiind acuzata ca a introdus ilegal in tara literatura de opozitie.

Sursa: MediaFax via stirileprotv.ro

Un'affermazione ambiziosa. " Il video più divertente di YouTube", così lo definiscono a Mountain View. E non c'è proprio da scherzare (questa passatecela), visto che c'è voluto un algoritmo degli ingegneri di Google Research per scovarlo in tutti quelli postati nella categoria Comedy. Ma come valutare quanto facesse ridere un certo video? Semplificando, è bastato un programma che prendesse in considerazione quanti " hahah" e simili fossero pubblicati nei commenti, e quante volte si usassero acronimi come " lol", " lmao", " rofl", parole come " funny" ed emoticon come " :)" o " ". Senza contare, poi, le diverse enfasi che si davano ai commenti (" looooool" vale più di " lool"?). Stabiliti i parametri, i diversi video sono stati dati in pasto all'algoritmo, considerando anche la combinazione di testo e caratteristiche audiovisive. Chi ha vinto? Be', non vi resta che guardare di seguito e giudicare. E, se non vi basta, potete vedere l' intera classifica.

 

Fonte: Wired.it

Medicii de la Spitalul general Ben Taub din Houston, Texas, testeaza efectele ketaminei asupra oamenilor care sufera de o forma severa a depresiei. Ei spun ca aceasta substanta, care are capacitatea de a amorti simturile printr-o stare de anestezie disociativa, poate înlatura starile depresive.

Tratamentul actual care este utilizat în cazul depresiei îsi face efectul în câteva saptamâni, timp în care pacientii înregistreaza tendinte de suicid. Ketamina, în schimb, îsi face efectul imediat dupa administrare.

Pacientii tratati în studiu au declarat ca în primele 24 de ore de la administrarea ketaminei s-au calmat si relaxat. "Înainte, totul era în ceata. Dupa tratamentul cu ketamina am simtit ca pot începe o viata noua, sa merg acasa si sa îmi vad prietenii sau sa fac cumparaturi si sa gatesc pentru familia mea", a declarat pacienta Heather Merrill, mama a trei copii.

Daca rezultatele studiului vor fi validate, cercetatorii vor prelungi perioada de testare si vor încerca sa administreze trei doze de ketamina pe saptamâna, pentru a observa efectele pe termen lung. De asemenea, daca totul merge conform planului, ei spera sa creeze o pastila ca alternativa la tratamentul intravenos.

Ketamina poate cauza unele probleme la nivelul vezicii urinare, iar unele studii sugereaza ca ea ar putea crea probleme cardiace, putând chiar sa înrautateasca sanatatea mintala.

Sursa: Daily Mail - via Descopera.ro